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Marriage certificates represent one of the key primary sources for family information, typically being issued the same day as a marriage takes place. In some cases, religious-based marriage documents exist too, but the civil record of the marriage has always been required

2 of mine are listed with the right date; we were married at city hall. My older sister who got married a few months before me at a church is also listed correctly. My close friend was married July 4, 1992; I was there, it was a back yard 4th of July wedding. Hers says July 14th. Could that be the day the pastor filed it? Does anyone know?

She just celebrated 25 years. She didn't have pics scanned so I scanned all mine.

I suppose it could be the date the pastor filed it, unless it was a transcription error?

Almost all of the marriage licenses I have in my tree come from the same county in Pennsylvania going from the early 1900's to 2002 and 2006 when both my parents remarried to their 2nd spouse. And looking at the various licenses over the years, it's amazing (and expected) how the format changed.

I have a marriage license for my paternal grandparents, where the license was issued on 6 Oct 1934, they got married on 27 Oct 1934 and the Priest who performed the marriage has 9 Nov 1934 as the date he certified that he married them on October 27th.

Fast forward to 2002 when my Dad remarried, no priest/pastor involved this time, they filed for a license on 1 Mar 2002, the license was issued 4 Mar 2002 and they got married on 26 Apr 2002 in front of the Judge.

I am going to try and find some early church marriage records, if they exist, for some of my ancestors, since sometimes I just have the marriage license with the date of the license but no marriage date and no signature by a priest/pastor. Not sure what happened, I do believe those ancestors truly did get married though.

My personal marriage certificate and the associated online record are correct. The record shows the date of the wedding and it also shows a "Recording Date" which is 7 days later. So, yes someone could have mixed up the marriage date and the recording date.

Just my personal observation/opinion, but marriage records are some of the sloppiest records around lol.

Not sure why other than the exact date rarely matters for any legal purpose so people don't know and don't complain if they do know.

Usually, you only need a record to prove you ARE married, not exactly how long you have been. And, when you do need to prove how long you've been married its usually years that matter not days. The only reasons I can even think of are for pension or social security survivor benefits connected to a spouse.

For all these reasons, I suspect there isn't as much quality control over the transcription of these records as there is over others.

I'm going to text her when she gets up to see if she still speaks to the person that married her to ask. I bet that's the date it was filed. They got married in Morris County at a friends. Maybe Morris county does it different then the counties everyone else was married in.

I put in for a transcription error so I could note they were married on July 4, 1992 for anyone else looking at it.

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